Sheppardess Kristen Forbes, 19, interacts with her young pygmy goat kids at the family’s Happy Trails Goat Farm in Calimesa on Tuesday, May 2, 2017. The goats will be participating in a baby goat yoga up coming event at Monty’s Montessori Academy in Calimesa.

Young pygmy goat kids roam the yard at the Happy Trails Goat Farm in Calimesa on Tuesday, May 2, 2017. The goats will be participating in a baby goat yoga up coming event at Monty’s Montessori Academy in Calimesa.

The Gilfillan family members only wanted to come up with a fundraiser for their international Christian ministry to help an animal husbandry project in Nepal.

Christina Gilfillan suggested goat yoga, which she had seen on the internet, a variation on a cat yoga class she once took at an animal rescue in Los Angeles. Her sister, Jessica Gilfillan, happens to be a yoga instructor.

Within two weeks, they sold out three sessions of their Saturday, May 6, Monty’s Babygoat Yoga event, attracting about 200 participants of all ages to the lawn outside the family’s Monty’s Montessori Academy in Calimesa.

“We’re excited the community is getting involved,” Christina Gilfillan said.

They appear poised to catch a trend bouncing up on goat farms and yoga studios around the country. It has gone viral on social media, with videos showing baby goats bouncing on and ricocheting off the backs of yoga students.

The Gilfillans are not the first in the Inland Empire to tap into the craze, but they are helping fill what appears to be a demand. There is enough interest that they have already scheduled more classes for May 20.

So has Kayla Causey, who hosted a class last month and has two more scheduled at her Sunny Cabana Farm near Riverside. Causey and her husband, Aaron, produce goat milk products at their organic, small family farm and micro-dairy. And now goat yoga.

Why is this a thing?

“The combination of the two — yoga in an outdoors setting, on a natural organic farm — is something people are craving,” Causey wrote in an email. Goats may add a novelty factor, but “it’s the benefits you get from the endorphins released during exercise combined with all the oxytocin of animal therapy.”

Add in vitamin D from sunshine and the blood pressure lowering benefits of being outdoors and “it’s a pretty rewarding experience,” she said.

The craze started gaining attention last year with events in Oregon, New Hampshire and other locations. Some practitioners claim to have hundreds on their class wait lists.

“‘Goat Yoga’ is certainly a fad in the yoga community right now,” said Andrew Tanner, chief ambassador for Yoga Alliance, a Virginia-based nonprofit association of teachers and schools, in a statement.

He suggested such classes may be akin to bhakti yoga.

“Bhakti yoga is usually associated with ecstatic chanting and meditation and is centered on feeling devotional love,” he wrote. “Being with playful goat kids while doing a few yoga postures would likely warm anyone’s heart and is a harmless way to stay connected to nature” while doing yoga.

The goats for the Gilfillans’ event are being supplied by the Happy Trails Goat Farm in Calimesa, which breeds and sells young goats — called kids — as 4-H projects, show animals and companion pets.

Owner Elizabeth Forbes, who has raised goats for 16 years in Calimesa, said she has not been involved in goat yoga before, but can see how goats would like it.

“They love things they can jump off,” said

Her daughter Kristen Forbes, said “they are like dogs, if you call one they come.” And when they are ready for afternoon nap time, “they’ll all curl up in a dog pile.”

Christina Gilfillan said in a trial class the goats were friendly and liked to interact with people.

“They like to climb. They like to jump,” she said. “They’re very tiny so they don’t hurt.”

As part of the Christina Gilfillan’s permit from the city — where she is now referred to as “the goat yoga lady” — sanitary wipes, running water and restroom facilities are required for cleanup from any accidents.

Jessica Gilfillan, who teaches hatha yoga, is working on a set of poses with safety of participants in mind but that also allow outreach where a student can touch or bottle feed a goat and remain in balance.

She sees cat and goat yoga as appealing to people who want to try different combinations.

“It’s just an era where people think, ‘I like this and I like this, so let’s put it together,’” she said.

But from her experience, she won’t pitch chicken yoga. She found chickens liked to pick at her toes.

Gail Wesson has covered news for The Press-Enterprise for decades, mostly in Riverside County, with occasional forays across the county line. Datelines on her stories span the county – from the state agricultural inspection station in Blythe, to the Circle in Corona, the Stringfellow Acid Pits in Mira Loma, Temecula before there were traffic signals and to the highest point in the county, Mount San Jacinto. Most of her time has been spent covering local governments or how county, state or federal government affects communities. Breaking news, from floods to wild land fires and the consequences of disasters, watchdog reporting, criminal courts coverage and environmental explainers on water rights/supply issues and why bald eagles and San Bernardino kangaroo rats should be saved are icing on her news cake.

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